


you are one of life's anomalies (and this is how i fell)

by andromeda3116



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Community: 1sentencefic, F/M, Post-Canon, and indeed the very foundations of grammar, behold my egregious abuse of semicolons and em-dashes, to cram 2400 words into fifty sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 06:36:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18493414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromeda3116/pseuds/andromeda3116
Summary: It's barely a smudge in the distance, a faint blur on the horizon, but it tugs at her even so, and she half-thinks she could find it even if she was lost at sea, like he somehow put a compass in her that always points due Ketterdam.——A sketch of a love story in fifty sentences.





	you are one of life's anomalies (and this is how i fell)

**Author's Note:**

> me: *shows up to a new fandom three years late with a fourteen-year-old challenge prompt from a dead journaling platform after a tumultuous year-long hiatus* "'sup?"
> 
> if you've never seen these before, the idea is that you get fifty prompts, and you have to write one sentence — and _only_ one sentence — for each prompt. it's supposed to be an exercise in learning brevity but in practice it is also an exercise in learning how to artfully break every rule of sentence structure that your high school teachers ever languished over teaching you. they're numbered, but i rearranged them into chronological order for coherency's sake, and this one in particular is much more cohesive than others i've written, which i think is technically breaking the rules, but — as this is not a formal claim and i am already setting _strunk and white_ ablaze — i decided that i might as well toss that rule on the fire with it.
> 
> the title is the poem "quirk" by yrsa daley-ward.

_#46 - Horizon_

It's barely a smudge in the distance, a faint blur on the horizon, but it tugs at her even so, and she half-thinks she could find it even if she was lost at sea, like he somehow put a compass in her that always points due Ketterdam.

_#13 - Bias_

“He misses you, you know,” Jesper says as they stand looking over the options in the bakery, the first evening of her second stop in Ketterdam since leaving, “even if he never writes.”

_#11 - Birthday_

“You _did_ tell me that I could steal your secrets once you became a rich man,” is all Inej says by way of explanation, when everyone shows up at his door to drag him to Wylan’s for an impromptu party on what he very definitely did _not_ tell anyone was his nineteenth birthday.

_#28 - Jousting_

“I will have you know,” Jesper insists over the table, in about half a glass too deep and perhaps trying just a little too hard, “that I am an _excellent_ jouster, on account of my lance-like shape.”

_#27 - Jester_

“I missed my calling to the stage,” Jesper says grandly, and then, while the others are rolling their eyes and groaning, mutters under his breath so only Inej can hear it: “ _someone’s_ gotta cheer everyone up when you and Nina are gone.”

_#34 - Serenade_

Kaz makes the mistake of singing _one line —_  not even _really_ singing, but they’re discussing a drinking song that no one believes Wylan has never heard, and he just sort of —  _you know how it goes,_ and sings the first verse off-hand, and from that moment on, Jesper and Nina will not _shut up_ about how he needs to get lessons from Wylan to “hone his natural talents”.

_#35 - Sarcasm_

They insist that they’re sincere, that he actually does have a decent voice, or could with training, but Wylan looks horrified at the very idea of Kaz and singing lessons in the same sentence, which is roughly how Kaz feels about it as well. 

_#33 - Stupidity_

Kaz just _looks_ at Wylan, who mouths _I'm sorry_ and surreptitiously moves Jesper's glass away.

_#26 - Jump_

Inej is on the other side of the table and so can't help him, if she even would have, and she swears Nina's ears perk up like a dog's when she accidentally brushes against Kaz's side and he twitches.

_#22 - Quirks_

“Are you —” Nina starts, _audibly_ struggling not to laugh as Kaz determinedly refuses to acknowledge her, “are you ticklish?”

_#06 - Whimsy_

“ _Ohhhh_ ,” Nina whispers, while he looks to Inej for help and finds nothing but amusement, “you are gonna buy me _so many waffles_ , or else I might just… slip, and tell Jesper about this.”

_#19 - Balcony_

Everyone else has lurched or been dragged off to bed, but she’s still awake, sitting on the stone railing of a balcony, looking out over the city; it’s pretty from here, orange lights sparkling off the water like carelessly-scattered gems, the wind from the sea lifting her hair from her shoulders, and he keeps his distance so he won’t break the spell — but she hears him anyway and turns, her smile soft, a bit sad.

_#18 - Balloon_

The silence swells and fills the air between them like a physical presence holding them apart, and — and she’ll be leaving again in the morning, so he ( _should press forward, push it aside, take this chance to be with her while she’s here_ ) shouldn’t keep her up any later than he already has.

_#04 - Wonder_

She will ask him thrice what happened to him before he finally — gathers up the nerve? or gives in to the weakness? — and tells her.

_#37 - Soliloquy_

She doesn’t interrupt him until the very end, the half-sentence he leaves trailing, about how he was too weak to make it to shore —  _then how? —_  and all he says is, “Corpses float.”

_#05 - Worry_

Those two words haunt her for a long, long time.

_#17 - Belief_

She finds the words some time later, a moment alone: “You deserve better than to spend your life held captive by the worst thing that ever happened to you.”

_#50 - Defeat_

“No,” he replies simply, “I don't.”

_#47 - Valiant_

They save a young girl, no more than thirteen, who’d been kept as a minor mercher’s pet and — well, _she_ sees that she's been rescued by a good-looking, sharp-dressed young man, nineteen or twenty, aloof and (if still not warm) a bit less cold than he used to be, whose name is whispered fearfully by all the men who have hurt her — she gets stars in her eyes and red on her cheeks, and Kaz is _horrified_ when he realizes that she thinks he's some kind of knight in shining armor.

_#43 - Nuance_

Inej shakes her head when he says that the girl is delusional, after bringing her to the harbor for _the Wraith_ to take her home, and tells him, “Whatever you may have done yesterday and whatever you may do tomorrow, today you _are_ her hero,” and, with a glance to her ship, the harbor, the city around them, “just like you were mine.”

_#01 - Walking_

He _doesn’t_ go to meet her at the docks like some lovesick puppy, it’s just that — it’s just that he has business at the harbor, near berth twenty-two, and although it could easily wait until later, it’s a fine… frigid… late-autumn morning and he could use the fresh… sea air of… the… Barrel.

_#12 - Blessing_

He’s _deeply_ glad that no one is awake to ask him, because the only thing more pathetic than the fact that he’s going to the stupid docks to meet her like some lovesick puppy is _that_ excuse.

_#10 - Weddings_

Her arrival coincides with some society wedding that Wylan’s been invited to, and Kaz and Inej both see an opportunity to do some digging into the father of the bride, who — rumor has it — has a history of trafficking in stolen girls.

_#36 - Sordid_

Nina and Wylan go together to the wedding — the idea being to cause gossip and draw attention to the unexpected couple, what scandal, and eventually for Nina to make a scene accusing Wylan of still being in love with “that badly-dressed criminal” — while Jesper is stationed up high with a rifle, Kaz impersonates a server, and Inej waits in the wings for the opportunity to slip into the upper floors of the grand estate unseen.

_#02 - Waltz_

In a quiet alcove, they stand and watch the room, dancers twirling around each other like flowers, both refusing to acknowledge their mirrored, simmering envy at these undamaged strangers laughing, casual touches, easy romance.

_#14 - Burning_

It’s so — it’s so _random_ , so off-the-wall, such an inane coincidence, such _incidental_ bad luck — at the reception, biding her time in the shadows until nine bells, she hears words that turn the air in her lungs to smoke: “Pity the Menagerie closed,” a former client says.

_#20 - Bane_

The roaring in her ears should be enough to drown it out, should be enough to turn the words into white noise, but it echoes in her skull, pounding loud — “Had a lovely little Suli thing there once, a dancer or something, I think, had the prettiest little mouth on her, and —”

_#25 - Quitting_

“I am _so_ sorry,” Kaz gushes suddenly, sounding like a stranger, making a scene over the carafe of wine he's broken all over the man’s shiny shoes and impeccable white trousers, the glass on the floor, the conversation interrupted; in the chaos, Inej makes her escape.

_#24 - Quarrel_

The others are appalled and angry, seething with it, fury so potent he can feel it even as he’s being escorted from the ballroom; he fucked it up, threw the job, ruined the plans _he_ made and left them hanging and confused behind enemy lines, and he could not care less right now.

_#31 - Smirk_  

She’s not on her ship, no one has seen her; he makes up a story about wanting to give her a gift — deliberately dropping enough hints to draw knowing smirks from several crew members — so they won’t wonder why he had to look for her at all.

_#41 - Nowhere_

She’ll go to ground, he thinks, somewhere she feels safe — but if not _the Wraith_ , then where in Ketterdam has ever been safe?

_#07 - Waste/Wasteland_

She crosses the roofs like a soldier sprinting in a desperate retreat, tearing her hand open on something in her haste, and she hardly even knows where she’s going until she gets there: the only place in this saintsforsaken city that’s ever felt like shelter.

_#40 - Solitary_  

She doesn’t even have a room here anymore, and this isn’t even his office anymore, but the crows remember her and watch as she throws herself through the window and stumbles against the wall, breathing ragged and hands shaking.

_#15 - Breathing_

She’s only dimly aware of the door opening, too focused on trying to control her panicked breathing, too caught in the memory, too trapped by the words, by the — by the casual boasting, off-hand remark, like she’d been a dish he’d chosen from a menu, a _thing_ to be consumed — by the horrible choking feeling that that’s _exactly_ what she was — by the nausea sinking in her stomach like a stone — by the shame, she’d thought she was beyond this, she really thought she’d defeated Tante Heleen and purged the Menagerie from her body, by the —

_#32 - Sorrow_

He finds her in his old office, crumpled on the floor underneath the window where she used to sit in the sunset — left hand covered in blood, hood pulled over her face, hair come loose from its braid beneath it — and the sight of her there, curled up and small, her worried crows on the windowsill peeking in anxiously, causes a physical pain like a vise slowly breaking his chest. 

_#08 - Whiskey and rum_

It’s a poor man’s medik kit — needle and thread, bandages and gauze, and a flask of high-proof liquor — and she watches his hands as he soaks a piece of gauze in the alcohol before warning her, “This is going to hurt.”

_#16 - Breaking_

Her breathing won't steady, she can feel his eyes on her and she can't look up to see what's there — disgust? pity? contempt? concern? pain? — and — and damn it all, she's about to _cry_ , and she can't cry over this, won't cry over this, not here and not now, it's in the past and she's seeing them _all_ brought to justice but all she can hear is _had the prettiest little mouth on her —_  the words wrenched into her like a hook and plucked the memory out of her like a rotten plum and maybe it’s more potent for having lain dormant so long, maybe it’s fermented in the back of her mind and she’s let it sink into her skin the way Kaz let the feel of waterlogged corpses sink into his, maybe she can’t ever be free of it.

_#21 - Quiet_

He doesn't exactly reach for her and she doesn't exactly lean into him, but by the time the panic crests and begins its agonizing recession, her forehead has come to rest on his chest, just below his shoulder, and his hand — ungloved — is on the back of her neck, fingertips _just_ brushing against her skin.

_#44 - Near_

He clearly doesn’t know what to do or say — he’s Kaz Brekker, comforting and gentle, he is _not —_  but she thinks it might be enough that he  _—_ he threw his own plan so she could leave, he came after her rather than stay to salvage what he could, he  _—_ he’s _here_ , he's here and he's _trying_ and he's holding her as much as either of them are capable of.

_#48 - Virtuous_

She finally falls asleep, and the part of him that contains all that's left of Kaz Reitveld says to stay with her, but Kaz Brekker has a debt to see to, a boiling in his blood — the vengeance isn't strictly his to take, but she has enough blood on her hands already, and far too many scruples to do it herself.

_#30 - Just_

It’s murder and there’s no way around it — patronizing a brothel without asking where the girls came from is not actually a crime, and the man is not currently threatening anyone — but the remnants of his conscience lay silent when he thinks of how she couldn’t seem to look him in the eye.

_#39 - Share_

He robs the body to provide the illusion of a motive, takes all the man's  _kruge_ and tosses his wallet into the canal, before handing the wad of bills to the first drifter he lays eyes on.

_#23 - Question_

She doesn’t ask and he doesn’t tell her where the blood on his shirt came from.

_#09 - War_  
  
It turns out that Wylan — thinking fast and improvising wildly alongside Nina in a half-baked scheme that apparently ended with them being dramatically “caught” _in flagrante delicto —_  managed to get the information they were looking for out of the house, “No thanks to _you_ ,” Jesper snaps at Kaz, who makes no effort to defend himself.

_#45 - Natural_

“See?” is all he says, expression cold and unreadable, “I always said the merchling was a natural.”

_#42 - Neutral_

Inej tells Nina and Jesper herself later, softly, without looking away from the harbor, and all their crackling fury — thick in the air around them for hours — vanishes in an instant; she doesn’t wait for them to speak, either in apology or comfort, but simply thanks them for getting her information on another slaver, and says that she’ll see them the next time she’s in Ketterdam. 

_#29 - Jewel_

“It’s… supposed to be lucky,” he tells her, in the pre-dawn gloom before she leaves for the harbor, looking at anything but the aquamarine in her hand, “for… journeys at sea.”

_#03 - Wishes_

“Kaz Brekker, being sentimental?” she teases, but clutches the stone to her heart for what it means: a talisman, to protect her and bring her back home soon.

_#38 - Sojourn_

“This won’t be a long trip,” she says, and meets his eyes, intense and coffee-black; he’s very, very close, fingers brushing her hair from her face, and she’s struck with the twin urges to flee from Ketterdam and the nightmares it seems to have carved into her very bones, and to never, ever leave this room or this moment.

_#49 - Victory_

It would be nothing to those flowers who danced so carelessly at the wedding, but for him, the brush of his thumb over her cheekbone and the ghost of his lips on hers — where the water doesn’t rise and her skin doesn’t go cold under his fingers and he doesn’t wrench himself away — it’s a small sort of magic, the sense of touch and her slow smile, like the first bud of spring emerging from the snow.


End file.
